Criminal Law Commons^™

Electronic Impulses, Digital Signals, And Federal Jurisdiction: Congress's Commerce Clause Power In The Twenty-First Century, Ryan K. Stumphauzer

Vanderbilt Law Review

[W]e can think of no better example of the police power, which the Founders denied the National Government and reposed in the States, than the suppression of violent crime and vindication of its victims. Suppose that a Manhattan mafia boss contacts a hit man located in the Bronx and asks him to kill a police informant. Suppose further that the hit man commits the murder at the informant's apartment in Queens. Should the federal government care that the mafia boss contacted the hit man using a cellular telephone rather than a hand-delivered letter? Should it matter that the cellular signal …

Law On The Rocks: The Intoxication Defenses Are Being Eighty-Sixed, Meghan P. Ingle

Vanderbilt Law Review

The ever-controversial voluntary intoxication defense faces possible elimination by statutory abrogation. Originally developed by nineteenth-century common law courts, the defense recognizes that an intoxicated defendant may be incapable of possessing the mens rea specified by an offense. Increasingly criticized in recent years, the defense received a substantial blow to its continued vitality in the 1996 Supreme Court decision Montana v. Egelhoff. In a sharply divided opinion," a plurality of the Court held that a defendant does not possess a constitutional right to present evidence of voluntary intoxication in his defense. The Egelhoff decision has caused much commentary, both positive and …

Essential Elements, Nancy J. King, Susan R. Klein

Vanderbilt Law Review

For well over a century the United States Supreme Court has debated who has final authority to define what is a "crime" for purposes of applying the procedural protections guaranteed by the Constitution in criminal cases. After numerous shifts back and forth from judicial to legislative supremacy,' the Court has settled upon a multi-factor analysis for policing the criminal-civil divide, an analysis that permits courts to override legislative intent to define an action as civil in the rare case where the action waddles and quacks like a crime. This tug-of-war over the finality of legislative labels in defining crime and …

Specific Crime Vs. Criminal Ways: Criminal Conduct And Responsibility In Rule 3e1.1, Matthew Richardson

Vanderbilt Law Review

The United States Sentencing Commission ("Sentencing Commission") drafted Rule 3E1.1 with an inherent ambiguity, one that concerns both the Rule's purpose and design. Rule 3E1.1 allows for a reduction in sentence if a criminal "accepts responsibility" for his offense.' As result of the Rule's ambiguous language, prior tensions in interpretation of its meaning have spilled over into the current debate over sentence reductions.

The inherent ambiguity results from the Rule's genesis. The Sentencing Commission enacted the Rule with the purpose of increasing predictability in sentencing by reducing judicial discretion. Before the enactment of the Rule, mitigating and aggravating circumstances allowed …

A Proposal To Strengthen Juvenile Miranda Rights: Requiring Parental Presence In Custodial Interrogations, Robert E. Mcguire

Vanderbilt Law Review

On October 31, 1997, eleven-year-old Nathaniel Abraham was at school and enjoying Halloween with his grade school classmates. The festivities ended, however, when members of the Pontiac, Michigan police department entered the classroom and arrested Nathaniel for first degree murder. Two days before, on October 29, eighteen- year-old Ronnie Lee Greene was walking out of a convenience store in Pontiac when a .22 caliber bullet struck him in the head and killed him.' Police suspected Nathaniel who, at the time of his arrest, had over twenty encounters with law enforcement. Once in custody, Nathaniel eventually confessed to shooting Greene and …

Avoiding The Appearance Of Judicial Bias: Allowing A Federal Criminal Defendant To Appeal The Denial Of A Recusal Motion Even After Entering An Unconditional Guilty Plea, Nancy B. Pridgen

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the most fundamental social interests is that law shall be uniform and impartial. There must be nothing in its action that savors of prejudice or favor or even arbitrary whim or fitfulness. A suspect is charged with a federal crime, obtains legal counsel, and finds out who his judge will be. Because of a prominent rumor circulating in the community that the defendant once had an affair with the judge's wife, the defendant questions the judge's ability to be fair with him. He and his counsel file a timely motion for recusal under 28 U.S.C. § 455(a).' The …

Witch Doctors And Battleship Stalkers: The Edges Of Exculpation In Entrapment Cases, John F. Preis

Vanderbilt Law Review

The bumbling criminal has long been humorous to the law-abiding. Take, for example, a man recently intent on robbing a bank. The man entered a Bank of America bank, grabbed a deposit slip, and wrote on it "This iz a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag."' While waiting in line for a teller, he became worried that someone had seen him write the note and would inform the police. Thus, he exited the bank, walked across the street to the Wells Fargo bank, and gave the note to a teller. The teller, probably sensing his lack of dangerousness …

Corporate Liability, Risk Shifting, And The Paradox Of Compliance, William S. Laufer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The evolution of corporate criminal law is explained by the shifting risks of liability and loss between corporations and their agents in accommodating the illogic of vicarious liability. A vivid example of the effects of this risk shifting is seen with the recent emergence of the good citizen corporation movement. This movement en- courages prosecutors with vast discretion to leverage indictments and convictions of subordinate agents, resort to civil and administrative actions against large and medium-sized corporations in place of criminal indictments, compromise agent indemnification, and enforce corporate self-regulation through elaborate plea agreements. Not surprisingly, organizations tend to conceive of …

Humpty Dumpty On Mens Rea Standards: A Proposed Methodology For Interpretation, Katherine R. Tromble

Vanderbilt Law Review

"When I use a word.., it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.", This statement by Humpty Dumpty sets forth the argument of this Note: words used to describe mens rea in federal criminal statutes have plain, ordinary meanings. When the United States Supreme Court interprets these statutes, it should do so according to the words' plain meanings. Because the Court has not used this approach in past cases, the law of mens rea on the federal level is confusing and inconsistent.

The Court has tried to repair poorly drafted statutes by interpreting them in various …

Qualified Immunity: Ignorance Excused, Barbara E. Armacost

Vanderbilt Law Review

Public officials receive qualified immunity from damages liability for constitutional violations if they reasonably could have believed their actions were constitutional under clearly established law. In this regard qualified immunity is quite unusual. In most other legal contexts, failure to know the law is virtually never excused. The only other context where notice or knowledge of illegality plays any role is in criminal law, but even mistakes of penal law are rarely excused.

In this Article, Professor Armacost uses fair notice in criminal law as a paradigm for analyzing the role of notice in constitutional damages actions. She argues that …

Coping With "Loss": A Re-Examination Of Sentencing Federal Economic Crimes Under The Guidelines, Frank O. Bowman, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

The primary determinant of sentence length for federal economic criminals is the amount of "loss" resulting from an offender's conduct.' The idea of basing sentences for economic crimes primarily on "loss" has become the source of ongoing, complex, and proliferating disputes about what the term "loss" really means and how it should be interpreted in particular cases. The "loss" calculation is one of the most frequently litigated issues in federal sentencing law. There are at present splits of opinion between the federal circuits on at least eleven analytically distinct issues concerning the meaning and application of the "loss" concept. Even …

Section 2254(D) Of The New Habeas Statute: An (Opinionated) User's Manual, Evan T. Lee

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 made wholesale changes to the federal habeas corpus statute. In particular, the statute contains a new section 2254(d), which controls the standards that federal habeas courts must employ when reviewing state convictions. This new provision governing the standards of review applies generally to petitions filed after April 24, 1996, the effective date of the Act. The provision's text, however, is critically ambiguous in several respects. Because most of the federal circuit courts of appeal have not yet settled even basic interpretive questions about section 2254(d), federal district courts and circuit panels …

Melting The Plastic Theories: Advocating The Common Law Of Fraud In Credit Card Non-Dischargeability Actions Under 11 U.S.C. § 523(A)(2)(A), Craig A. Bruens

Vanderbilt Law Review

If credit card-holders purchase items they cannot afford, they may make minimum payments and avoid default. Most people carry debt on their credit cards,' and card-issuers who profit from interest on these balances encourage consumers to carry a balance. When a debtor acquires too much debt and files for bankruptcy, the debtor may generally discharge all of his debts to gain a "fresh start." This discharge of debts completely bars creditors from collecting the money owed to them, and the resulting losses have frustrated the credit card industry.

To prevent debts from becoming uncollectible due to discharge, credit card-issuers frequently …

Bargaining About Future Jeopardy, Daniel C. Richman

Vanderbilt Law Review

The debate about how much protection criminal defendants should have against successive prosecutions has generally been conducted in the context of how to interpret the Double Jeopardy Clause. The doctrinal focus of this debate ignores the fact that for the huge majority of defendants-those who plead guilty instead of standing trial-the Double Jeopardy Clause sin- ply sets a default rule, establishing a minimum level of protection when defendants choose not to bargain about the possibility of future charges. In this Article, Professor Richman examines the world that exists in the shadow of minimalist double jeopardy doctrine, exploring the dynamics of …

The Ills Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines And The Search For A Cure: Using Sentence Entrapment To Combat Governmental Manipulation Of Sentencing, Robert S. Johnson

Vanderbilt Law Review

Consider the following scenario:' The police conduct an under- cover sting operation targeting drug traffickers. An undercover officer approaches a suspected drug dealer and arranges to purchase crack cocaine. Over a period of five weeks, the suspect makes seven sales to the officer, and the police arrest him after the final sale. The total amount sold by the defendant was 50.4 grams, just enough to place him within the mandatory minimum sentence of ten years. Had he sold up to 49.9 grams, his mandatory minimum sentence would only have been five years. The district court hearing this case found it …

Nameless Justice: The Case For The Routine Use Of Anonymous Juries In Criminal Trials, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law Review

We ask a lot of our jurors. The financial and emotional burdens of jury duty can be significant even in mundane cases. Deciding another's fate is often a trying ordeal, aggravated by unintelligible instructions, hostile attorneys or court personnel, miserable working conditions, and interminable delays. The voir dire process may require jurors to reveal intimate, embarrassing, or damning information about themselves and their families that they would not voluntarily choose to reveal. Confronted with allegations of violence, injury, or abuse, some jurors become traumatized or ill. On top of all of this, jury service exposes jurors, their families, and their …

The Brady Bill: Surviving The Tenth Amendment, Amy M. Pepke

Vanderbilt Law Review

In late 1993, Congress passed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act ("Brady Bill")' as an amendment to the Gun Control Act of 1968. By mid-1994, several suits had been initiated challenging the constitutionality of the Bill. Although the plaintiffs in each case brought several claims, the most viable and controversial challenge centers on the Tenth Amendment. Plaintiffs have argued that certain provisions of the Bill unconstitutionally commandeer state resources by imposing mandatory duties on the chief law enforcement officer ("CLEO") of the place of residence of the prospective gun purchaser. Supreme Court decisions on tenth amendment questions have been ambiguous …

Administrative Subpoenas And The Grand Jury: Converging Streams Of Criminal And Civil Compulsory Process, Graham Hughes

Vanderbilt Law Review

Litigation depends on information. In the last few decades, discovery in civil cases has been dramatically extended in order to move toward a position in which litigants' files are open to other parties with very few restrictions.' This movement in civil cases has been relatively smooth, for its merits in terms of economy and efficiency can be fortified by pointing to its even-handed mutuality and reciprocity. In criminal cases, by contrast, courts at one time thought that any considerable expansion in discovery must be rejected because the constraints of the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause would bar the exercise of compulsion …

Stretching The "Terry" Doctrine To The Search For Evidence Of Crime: Canine Sniffs, State Constitutions, And The Reasonable Suspicion Standard, Kenneth L. Pollack

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Fourth Amendment, protects an individual's interest in freedom from unreasonable government intrusions into personal privacy. When a court finds an investigative technique to be a search within the Amendment's meaning, it effectively concludes that Fourth Amendment protection should apply. If the government activity constitutes a search, that activity must be reasonable. If the activity does not amount to a search, however, the government enjoys virtual freedom to conduct that activity as unreasonably as it pleases. For pure investigatory searches, the United States Supreme Court has found that the probable cause requirement strikes the proper balance in defining reasonableness. Unlike …

Hearsay And Informal Reasoning, Craig R. Callen

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Federal Rules of Evidence define hearsay as "a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted."' A statement, in turn, is "(1) an oral or written assertion or (2) nonverbal conduct of a person, if it is intended by the person as an assertion." Hearsay is inadmissible unless it falls within an exception to the rule or an exclusion from the definition. Courts and commentators often write as if the distinctions they make between hearsay and nonhearsay are consistent with informal …

Sentence Credit For Pre-Trial Defendants Released To Residential Detention Facilities, Maryellen Sullivan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Most individuals consider continued confinement to a residential detention facility and denial of access to phone, mail, and family visits to constitute involuntary detention. The majority of the federal courts of appeal do not agree, however, and will not grant sentence credit to a federal offender for time spent, as a condition of bond, in a "treatment center" or "halfway house."' These same courts, without exception, grant sentence credit to individuals who are remanded to these residen- tial facilities after conviction. This inequity violates the purpose of the Bail Reform Act of 1966 (the "Act"), which ensures even-handed and uniform …

The Nature And Constitutionality Of Stalking Laws, Robert A. Guy, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1989, an obsessed fan shot and killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer at the front gate of her Los Angeles apartment.' Soon thereafter, in unrelated incidents, five Orange County women were slain at the hands of their intimate partners. All of the killings shared two common attributes: the killers had stalked their victims incessantly, and the justice system had been unable to intervene.

Suddenly conscious of the inadequacy of current law, the California legislature responded in 1990 by creating the nation's first stalking law." The statute criminalizes the repeated harassment or following of an- other person in conjunction with a threat. …

Federal Sentencing Guidelines For Organizational Defendants, Emmett H. Miller, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

The first Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizational Defendants ("Guidelines") became effective on November 1, 1991.' The Guidelines represent the federal government's latest action in the developing area of organizational sanctions and are the result of three years of work and several prior draft proposals by the United States Sentencing Commission. Part II of this Recent Development examines past legal and theoretical approaches to the problem of organizational sentencing. Part III describes both the past and present efforts of the United States Sentencing Commission to promulgate sentencing guidelines for organizations. Part IV analyzes the new Guidelines in light of the statutory …

The Payne Of Allowing Victim Impact Statements At Capital Sentencing Hearings, Michael I. Oberlander

Vanderbilt Law Review

A teenage boy returns from a night out with his friends to find his home in disarray; furniture is strewn about and valuable belongings are missing. He ventures towards his parents' bedroom, unaware of the horrific scene that he soon will witness. As he enters his parents' bedroom a sudden sense of reality washes over him as he views the scene in the room: his parents are dead on their bed, in inhuman, violently conorted positions, with blood covering the sheets, their bodies, the floor, and the walls. The boy, in shock, reaches for the phone and calls the police. …

Agreements For Cooperation In Criminal Cases, Graham Hughes

Vanderbilt Law Review

In criminal prosecutions, both state and federal, closely negotiated agreements for immunity and lenient plea bargaining in return for co- operation have acquired considerable importance. These agreements are an ancient practice now wearing sophisticated modern dress. They may arise in complex white-collar crime cases, organized crime cases, narcotics prosecutions, and, from time to time, in other prominent major felony cases. They constitute a phenomenon that differs in important ways from the run-of-the-mill guilty pleas that characterize our metropolitan courts and recently have preoccupied students of the criminal system. Unlike the ordinary guilty plea, the suspect or defendant in co- operation …

Criminal Discovery, Scientific Evidence, And Dna, Paul C. Giannelli

Vanderbilt Law Review

"At bottom the case against Claus von Bilow was a scientific case. It would have to be refuted by scientific evidence,"' wrote Alan Dershowitz. The von Bilow case is not alone. Many recent notorious criminal trials involved scientific proof. For example, the prosecution offered hypnotically refreshed testimony and bite mark evidence in the Ted Bundy case. Fiber evidence proved critical in the trial of Wayne Williams for the murder of two of the thirty young black males killed in Atlanta in the late 1970s.' Other illustrations include the pathology and serology testimony in the Jean Harris trial, the forensic analysis …

Breaking The Silence: Should Jurors Be Allowed To Question Witnesses During Trial?, Jeffrey S. Berkowitz

Vanderbilt Law Review

The above line of questioning destroyed the defendant's chance of being acquitted. Surprisingly, however, the questions that sealed the defendant's fate were raised by a juror after the prosecutor had failed to elicit the devastating facts.'

The notion of allowing jurors to question witnesses during a trial is not a novel one, but the governmental entities responsible for supervising the court system never have encouraged the practice.' As a result, juror questioning is not widespread.' This situation, however, may be changing. During 1989 judges in at least thirty states, including New York, California, and Connecticut, agreed to conduct the first …

An Analysis Of The Myths That Bolster Efforts To Rewrite Rico And The Various Proposals For Reform:"Mother Of God-Is This The End Of Rico?", G. Robert Blakey, Thomas A. Perry

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1970 Congress enacted the Organized Crime Control Act, Title IX of which is known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. Congress enacted the 1970 Act to "strengthen[]the legal tools in the evidence-gathering process, [to] establish[] new penal prohibitions, and [to] provid[e] enhanced sanctions and new remedies .,, RICO covers violence, the provision of illegal goods and services, corruption in labor or management relations, corruption in government, and commercial fraud. Congress found in 1970 that the sanctions and remedies available to combat these crimes under the law then in force were unnecessarily limited in scope and …

Reforming Rico: If, Why, And How, Rene Augustine

Vanderbilt Law Review

With its increased use both by prosecutors and private plaintiffs,the RICO statute has prompted a host of criticisms. For instance, some critics argue that Congress intended RICO to battle mafia crimes of the Al Capone genre, but that it has been applied in situations far beyond those Congress originally envisioned. Some seek RICO reform because of concerns that the statute may threaten civil liberties and chill free speech. Unhappiness with RICO has led to some uncommon alliances between diverse groups who wish to reform or repeal the statute. In fact, RICO itself has been applied to a wide variety of …

Rico Reform: How Much Is Needed?, William J. Hughes

Vanderbilt Law Review

RICO reform has been one of the most time-consuming and difficult issues in the 101st Congress. The House Subcommittee on Crime has held three full-day hearings on RICO reform, listening to testimony from a vast array of witnesses on both sides of the reform issue, and several in the middle. From a personal perspective, hardly a day has passed in the last nine months that I have not had a meeting, a discussion with a House colleague, or a staff session on the subject of RICO reform.At the outset I should mention that I do not have a magic "silver …